Root Crops

The soil at my community garden plot is nice and loamy and I noticed last year that the radishes and carrots I planted did really well. This year, even though I'll still be able to plant my garden at home, I'm choosing to concentrate my root crops in my SPCG plot.

One of the meals we really like is a roasted vegetable "pile" consisting of some combination of carrots, potatoes, beets, turnips, onions, parsnips, and sweet potatoes. Cut everything up and soak in olive oil, put a little seasoning on, and eat way more than you thought you would (we primarily eat only 1 main dish for meals and we can clean out a 9 x 12 pan easily). Leftovers, if you have them, are also good on spaghetti, surprisingly. But, I digress.

Back to growing root crops.

Sally recommends interplanting carrots, onions, and beets to help keep away carrot flies (the onions scare them away, apparently).

To prepare the soil, dig it deep; a few inches deeper than a carrot seems logical to me. Turnips can fit in with these root veggies and instead of where the beets would go. In my plot, I shoved soil aside in a 2 x 3 ish area and randomly placed onion sets then sprinkled 10 or 15 beet seeds, then sprinkled carrot seeds, a few turnip seeds, put some parsley on the edges, and some lettuce on the other edge. When the plants start to come up, I'll be able to see where the holes are and fill in with any of those shown above. I'll have a variety of greens all in the same place (turnips and beets make good stir-fry greens) and it will look interesting with all different textures of greens growing in the same place. "Filling in the gaps" will serve as succession planting so I don't have a glut of all the same thing all at the same time.